In Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she stepped out, the first face which caught her attention was that of her husband. ‘Oh goodness! How did he come to have ears like that?’ she thought, looking at his cold and imposing figure, and particularly at the cartilages of his ears propping up the brim of his round hat, which now startled her. When he caught sight of her he came towards her, pursing his lips into his usual ironic smile and looking straight at her with his large, tired eyes. An unpleasant kind of feeling gripped her heart when she met his obdurate and weary gaze, as if she had expected him to look different. She was particularly struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself which she experienced on meeting him. That feeling was a familiar one, of long-standing, which was similar to the state of pretence she experienced in her relationship with her husband; but whereas she had not noticed this feeling before, she was clearly and painfully aware of it now.
‘Yes, as you see, your devoted husband, as devoted as in the first year of marriage, has been burning with desire to see you,’ he said in his languid, high-pitched voice, and in the tone he almost always used with her, full of scorn for anyone who might actually speak like that.
‘Is Seryozha well?’ she asked.
‘And this is the only reward for my ardour?’ he said. ‘He’s well, quite well …’
31
VRONSKY did not even try to fall asleep at all that night. He sat in his seat, either staring straight ahead of him or inspecting the people coming in and going out, and if previously he surprised and unnerved people he did not know with his appearance of unshakeable composure, he now seemed even more haughty and aloof. He looked at people as if they were objects. The nervous young man who worked in the district court sitting opposite him took a violent dislike to him on account of that look. The young man had asked him for a light, and tried striking up a conversation with him, and had even given him a nudge to make him feel he was a person, not an object, but Vronsky continued to look at him in just the same way, as if he was a lamp-post, and the young man scowled, feeling he was losing his self-possession under the stress of not being acknowledged as a person, and could not fall asleep because of it.
Vronsky was not able to see anything or anyone. He felt like a tsar, not because he believed he had made an impression on Anna—he did not believe that yet—but because the impression she had made on him inspired him with happiness and pride.
What would come of all this he did not know, and did not even consider. He felt that all his previously dissipated, disparate energies had converged, and were now being directed with a terrifying force towards one blessed goal. And he was happy about that. He only knew that he had told her the truth, that he was travelling to be where she was, and that he now derived all his happiness in life, the only meaning in his life, from seeing and hearing her. And when he got out of the carriage at Bologovo* to drink some seltzer-water, and caught sight of Anna, his first words to her involuntarily told her exactly what he was thinking. And he was glad he had said that to her, that she now knew it, and was thinking about it. He did not sleep all night. After he had returned to his compartment, he endlessly went over in his mind all the situations in which he had seen her, everything she had said, and pictures of a possible future floated through his imagination, causing his heart to skip a beat.
When he got out of the carriage in Petersburg, he felt as invigorated and fresh after his sleepless night as after taking a cold bath. He stopped by his carriage to wait for her to get out. ‘I’ll see her again,’ he said to himself, unable to stop himself smiling, ‘I’ll see her walk, her face; she will say something, turn her head, cast a glance, maybe smile.’ But before he caught sight of her, he caught sight of her husband, whom the station-master was courteously escorting through the crowd. ‘Oh yes! The husband!’ Only now did Vronsky clearly understand for the first time that her husband was a person connected to her. He knew she had a husband, but he had not believed in his existence, and only truly believed in him when he saw him, with his head, his shoulders, and his legs in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a proprietary air.
After seeing Alexey Alexandrovich, with his Petersburg-fresh complexion and his austerely self-assured figure, in a round hat and with a slightly protruding back, he believed in him and experienced an unpleasant feeling, like that which would be experienced by a person dying of thirst who finally reaches a spring only to find a dog, a sheep, or a pig there which has drunk from it and fouled the water. The way Alexey Alexandrovich walked, twisting his whole pelvis and splaying his feet, particularly offended Vronsky’s sensibilities. He believed only he had the incontestable right to love her. But she was just the same, and the sight of her had just the same effect on him, rejuvenating him physically, exciting him, and filling his soul with happiness. He instructed his German valet, who had come running up from second-class, to take his things and go on ahead, while he himself went over to her. He witnessed the first encounter between husband and wife, and with the perceptiveness of someone in love noticed the signs of slight uneasiness with which she spoke to her husband. ‘No, she does not and cannot love him,’ he decided to himself.
As he approached Anna Arkadyevna from behind, he noticed with delight that she could sense his approach and wanted to turn round, and having recognized him, she turned to her husband again.
‘Did you have a good night?’ he asked, bowing to her and her husband together, and leaving Alexey Alexandrovich to assume this bow as intended for him, and to recognize him or not, as he saw fit.
‘Very good, thank you,’ she answered.
Her face seemed tired, and lacked that sparkle of animation that before had clamoured to express itself either in her smile or her eyes; but something gleamed in her eyes for a brief moment as she glanced at him, and despite the fact that this light was immediately extinguished, he was happy to have had that moment. She glanced at her husband to ascertain whether he knew Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovich looked at Vronsky with distaste, vaguely remembering who he was. Vronsky’s composure and self-confidence now came up against the glacial self-confidence of Alexey Alexandrovich like a scythe on stone.
‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.
‘Ah! We are acquainted, I believe,’ said Alexey Alexandrovich indifferently, holding out his hand. ‘You set off with the mother and returned with the son,’ he said, enunciating distinctly, as if each word was worth its weight in gold. ‘You must be returning from leave, I suppose?’ he asked, and without waiting for an answer, asked his wife in his jocular tone: ‘So, were there many tears shed in Moscow at your parting?’
By addressing these words to his wife, he let Vronsky perceive that he wished to be left alone, and he turned to him and touched his hat; but Vronsky addressed Anna Arkadyevna:
‘I hope I may have the honour of calling on you,’ he said.
Alexey Alexandrovich glanced at Vronsky with weary eyes.
‘Delighted,’ he said coldly. ‘We are at home on Mondays.’ Having dismissed Vronsky altogether, he then said to his wife: ‘And how wonderful that I had precisely half an hour to spare so I could come and meet you, and could show you my devotion,’ he continued in the same jocular tone.
‘You place too much emphasis on your devotion for me to appreciate it fully,’ she said in the same jocular tone, unable to stop herself listening to the sounds of Vronsky’s footsteps as he walked behind them. ‘But what is that to me?’ she thought, and she started to ask her husband how Seryozha had spent his time without her.